Dream Guide

The blue sea is endless as far as the eye can see, and two white sails are spread out in the wind, like the wings of a giant bird flying low on the sea. A flock of seagulls follows the mast, riding on the ship's air currents.

There was a black figure parked on the towering mast. Suddenly, with a croak, it soared into the sky, went straight into the sky, hovered in the sky for a while, then fell back down quickly, and flew across the water, attracting a group of gulls behind the boat. Quite a bit of a shock.

Aoki stood on the bow of the boat with his eyes closed, feeling the strong sea breeze blowing against his face.

The salty sea breeze carries a hint of the fragrance of leaves and flowers, but there are only vast expanse of blue waves in front of us, and there is no island or reef with any plant growth in sight.

When Petru turned the sail and sailed against the wind, the ethereal smell that came with the wind disappeared again.

"What the hell is this?" Petru cursed.

They had been searching at sea for five full days. The smell in the wind carried them around the same place, but they didn't see even a shadow of a reef.

Of course, what Aoki smelled was not only the fragrance, but also the vague mental fluctuations. Whenever he stood on the bow of the ship and closed his eyes, the crow sitting on the tall mast would fly up and look around in the high sky.

Its field of vision is Aoki's field of vision, but it still sees only the sea, even if it has touched the lowest layer of thin clouds.

Su Huilan and Petru stood not far from Qingmu. They also closed their eyes slightly and took long and deep breaths, as if they were doing an ancient yoga exercise.

There was an orange cat lying on the deck next to him, holding a half-eaten fish in his arms. His eyes were staring at the sea ahead, as if he had discovered prey.

Petru opened his eyes first and saw that the people next to him were still in a dream. Even the cat did not move. He could only shake his head mockingly.

This is the method Aoki taught him. When the spiritual fluctuations in the sea appear, carefully sense it and find a way to capture it. Although the energy is so weak that it is almost impossible to capture, and it will not replenish people's mental power, when you follow its rhythm and put your mental power to the farthest and widest range, the mental power is invisible. Got exercise.

Petru couldn't sense the existence of the mental fluctuation at first. He found that he was the only one on the whole boat that couldn't sense it. Even the bird and cat could sense it. He once felt that he was very lonely, no different from the salted fish in the warehouse.

Later, he found a trick. Whenever Aoki noticed mental fluctuations, his sensitive nose, which had been blown by the wind all year round, could smell a fresh scent of grass and trees, faintly drifting around with the salty sea breeze.

He didn't know if mental power had a taste, or if the ghost island was passing somewhere in the void when the mental power fluctuated. Two unrelated spaces had mutual influence when their orbits were infinitely close. Here You smell the fragrance of flowers on the island, but have the people on the island smell the salty and humid sea breeze here?

Oh, of course, since it is an island, of course it smells like the sea.

Petru imitated Qingmu and Su Huilan, closed his eyes, and looked for the faint fragrance in the sea breeze. The next day, he really felt the fluctuation of his spirit. The fluctuation was like the breath of the sea. He saw the tide under the moon and the little lives on the beach that came with the tide.

This feeling was like a dream, which fascinated him until the tide receded and the moon disappeared. The light in the dream was like the light of a comet leaving, gradually disappearing into the boundless silence in his mind.

In the past few days, Petru felt that his mental strength had improved greatly. Every time he would be immersed in this dream, and then he would happily open his eyes, only to be disappointed to find that he was always the first to wake up.

He lit a cigarette and looked at them quietly. When the smoke was halfway burning, Su Huilan also opened her eyes, and the cat nibbled on the fish under its paws again.

When the cigarette burned out, he flicked the cigarette butt into the sea with his fingers. The cigarette butt drew an arc and became a small black dot under the blue sky, falling towards the sea. At this time, a black dot also appeared at the junction of the sea and the sky, slowly growing in size.

The crow spread its wings, like a hawk returning from a distant hunt, and landed on Qingmu's head with a croak.

Only then did Aoki slowly open his eyes and stretched.

"Didn't we find it again?" Petru asked, "If this continues, when will we be able to find it?"

Aoki put his hand on the railing of the bow and said lazily: "Oh, I will always find it."

"But it's been five days!" Petru looked a little anxious. "The food on my ship is only enough to last for half a month. It will take another five days at most. If we can't find it in five days, we will have to return."

Aoki said: "You will always find it."

Su Huilan smiled and said: "It seems that you are already confident?"

Aoki said: "Even if you are successful, you are still a little sure. Have you discovered that this mental fluctuation has a certain pattern?"

Of course Su Huilan also discovered it, but she didn't know what this pattern meant.

"Are you saying that there is a cyclical pattern to its appearance?"

"I'm not sure. It could be cyclical, but it's more like a linkage."

"Linkage? How? Are messages being transmitted between Tabu and Tabu?"

"It's possible. Maybe these taboos are some kind of mechanism that triggers the underwater ruins."

Su Huilan said: "Then this mechanism is too big! I don't think humans have such ability to deploy a mechanism on a million square kilometers of sea. Moreover, some taboos are obviously no longer functional, such as the one on Lapa Island That. If it is a linked mechanism, as long as any one of them fails, the entire mechanism will fail. Then how to explain that these ghost islands appear and disappear from time to time, and that the underwater ruins also disappear and appear from time to time?"

Aoki shook his head and said: "The disappearance of the spiritual power on the stone does not necessarily mean that the taboo is malfunctioning! Maybe the taboo in different locations has different intensity of mental fluctuations!"

Su Huilan fell into deep thought and came back to her senses after a long time: "What you said makes sense. I ignored this. Mental strength may be a setting of the mechanism. Different wave strengths are used to control the function of the entire mechanism."

"So, how do you open this mechanism?" Petru said impatiently.

Aoki said: "I don't know. We have to see the appearance of the mechanism first. This ghost island that hides and seeks with us is probably the core of the entire mechanism, or at least the most important component. Just wait, since you You’ve seen it, it’s always going to happen.”

"Oh, my God!" Petru shouted, "Then what you say is useless! It's all nonsense!"

The crow said angrily: "Hey, hey, hey, what do you mean by bird? What do you mean by bird? It's best not to use the word bird when you curse people in the future. Don't you know that birds also have dignity?"

Petru rolled his eyes: "Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot you were a bird! By the way, what the hell are you?"

"Me?" My crow said proudly, "Of course I am the most human-like among birds, and the most bird-like among humans. Sometimes, I don't know whether I am a human or a bird, but biologically speaking, I seem to It is indeed a bird."

"Okay, Birdman!" Petru gave him a thumbs up.

"Um..." The crow felt something was wrong, "It's better to be a human or a bird. In linguistics, the position of the subject and the attributive is very particular. Sometimes if the position is changed, the meaning will be completely different, such as sauce elbow and elbow. Sauce, well, they have two different flavors..."

"Okay, okay, I understand." Petru raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. He really didn't know why he wanted to provoke this bird that was more nagging than his grandmother.

The crow finally shut up.

Petru felt a little surprised. In the past, this bird would not care whether it was threatening or begging for mercy. It would not stop until it finished what it said. However, this time, it immediately shut its mouth, as if someone had suddenly pinched its beak.

It seemed particularly quiet on the deck, with only the sea breeze blowing.

He smelled the faint fragrance of flowers in the wind.

However, he found that neither Qingmu, Su Huilan, nor the crow or the cat closed their eyes as usual. Instead, they opened their eyes wide and looked ahead.

Petru followed their gaze. On the blue sea ahead, an island suddenly appeared. The trees on the island were lush and green, and there seemed to be patches of silver fern flowers reflecting a strange light.